Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!uunet!wuarchive!usc!ucsd!helios.ee.lbl.gov!pasteur!ucbvax!CALSTATE.BITNET!JAJZ801 From: JAJZ801@CALSTATE.BITNET ("Jeff Sicherman,CSU Long Beach") Newsgroups: comp.lang.forth Subject: Forth (un)popularity Message-ID: <8912151446.AA13879@jade.berkeley.edu> Date: 14 Dec 89 21:31:58 GMT Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Reply-To: Forth Interest Group International List Organization: The Internet Lines: 42 Since I am a forth neophyte myself (played with it more than wrote any serious applications) but an experienced, and reasonably brave, computer analyst/programmer/consultant/recreator I have avoided commenting on the rather high-level ddiscussions in this group. But I feel qualified to comment on this issue: let's face it; the language is weird !/ The average person just does not think in reverse polish. In many cases people have problems thinking logically in forward english. This is not an abstruction for either the well educated computer scientist (candidate) or the experience, determined hacker but that's a limited market to sell to. If it had real potential, you can be sure that Borland or Microsoft would have given it a try. The technical descriptions for usoft's Quick language implementations (well, Quickbasic anyway) seem to be forth inspired if not derived so they seem to see it as a valid concept or even tool but that places it at a rather high level and not a language for the masses (or the 'rest of them') where the *big* bucks are. Several years ago, at a company I worked for, one of the executives who had delusions of technical expertise fell in love with a forth-based database/screen management product which was going to replace the way we were doing things and avoid the development bottleneck by letting the customer reps program some stuff themselves. Couldnt convince him of the unnaturallness issue and he got funding but went predictably nowhere with it. Several years later (after I left with my negativeness) the company, having been acquired by a fairly large corporation, which will go unnamed, decided to go with a forth based environment again for a fairly large multiuser system with many programmers involved; not geniuses but experienced, compitent people. The whole idea was scrapped within weeks of the forth classes starting and more traditional database languages were used. Forth seems just too ideosyncratic (sp?) and ill-suited for large projects with many programmers with average skills. It remains conceptually powerful and fascinating but that relegates it to a minority of uses and users for designing tools and even specialized processors and a few applications with avoid the acceptance and appropriateness constraints. After all, many people build electronic circuits and projects but a vastly smaller number design them and design chips. I think the reasons are similar. Jeff Sicherman jajz801@calstate.bitnet